Chasing the Illusion
by elissa echo
Summary: You can't live in the past or you're bound to make the same mistakes. Draco x Hermione


**Notes**: If I recall correctly, I wrote this as a gift. One of the few Draco/Hermione's that I haven't shelved forever and ever.  
  
**Warnings**: Character death.

**chasing the illusion.**

When she sees him, it's at the restaurant she goes to once a week with Harry, and he's sitting at the bar, a square glass of scotch in front of him. He picks it up, sips at it, once, twice, and then puts it back down. Turning around in his barstool, he surveys the room with the same air of detachment she had seen for so many years.

She looks at him, thinking it odd that after so many years he still guards himself as though he's hiding the Vatican City within him. The war has been over for years—two years counts as years, doesn't it?—and everyone has started to move on.

Checking her watch, she comes to the reluctant conclusion that Harry isn't going to show. He does that a lot these days; won't take her calls, won't show up for dinner. She supposes she has to forgive him, though, because it's closing around that time of the year again and she can't hold a grudge against the closest person in the world to her.

To keep her trip from being a total waste, she starts toward the bar intending to get a strawberry margarita before leaving, but as she's walking, she feels an unwelcome heat on her skin. She looks up. He's staring at her with weary recognition, an unprecedented burn simmering somewhere beneath the surface.

Her head lowers and she orders a strawberry margarita quietly, tapping her foot as she waits for the bartender to finish mixing her drink.

When he returns to push her drink at her, it's accompanied by another drink in a tall glass.

"What is this?" she asks.

"Mango daiquiri. I make them wonderfully, if I do say so myself."

"I imagine you do, but I didn't order this," she says, starting to slide it back to him.

The bartender shakes his head. "The bloke down there," he jerks his thumb back toward the figure a dozen or so seats down, "told me to give it to you."

"Oh. Well, thank him for me, will you?"

"Sure thing, miss."

She sips at the strawberry margarita, feeling the light warmth of alcohol stream into her body. It's like a light, spreading from her throat out to her feet, hands, head.

Some ten minutes later a wizard asks her if she would honour him with dinner, but she shakes her head and declines politely, taking a small gulp of her margarita and observing the dining couples—some of them look happy, others not so much. But they're all committed enough to go out to dinner, and she can only remember what it was like to go out in public with that comfort.

She finishes the margarita with one last toss of her head and picks up the mango daiquiri. She would leave it on the counter, but it seems rude and she doesn't really want to be rude. Even if he does deserve a bit of hostile attitude to keep him in check.

Walking down the length of the bar, past the bottles of tequila, vodka, liqueur, she sets the daiquiri in front of him. He glances up in slight surprise.

"It's not generally polite to return a drink someone's bought for you, Granger," he says, looking hard at her.

"I'm sorry, but I only have one drink a night."

"Well, as you can see," he tips his glass toward her, "I'm not one for mixed drinks."

"Sorry you wasted your money on me, then," she says, and turns to leave.

"It won't be a waste if you stay and talk for a bit," he says, taking another gulp of his scotch. She reckons it's his third since she arrived.

"And what, exactly, would we talk about?" she challenges him, facing him with crossed arms. "It's not like this is some reunion between old school friends, Malfoy."

"No, no, you're right. And I suppose if you really want to go, I can't stop you. I just thought you might want some company on a long Friday night. Yours seems to have abandoned you."

Hermione studies him. "In other words, you want a drinking buddy you can pour your heart out to who won't ostracize you more than you already are."

"You always were an astute one, Granger. Yes, I am capable of ambiguous compliments when the edges of sanity get fuzzy enough," he says before she can put in her word of surprise. "So, will you stay?"

Making a show of checking her watch, she nods. "I've got a bit of time to waste," she says and takes the seat next to him. He nudges the mango daiquiri in her direction and she plays with the base of the glass a bit before raising it to her lips.

It's sweet, and the mango mixed with the liqueur is an intoxicating drink.

"For someone who doesn't like mixed drinks, you've picked a good one," she says, scooping the dollop of whipped cream from the top and sucking it off her finger.

"A Malfoy that doesn't know what drinks to order a woman is a disgrace to the name."

"And you aren't?"

He glares at her. "I'm starting to change my mind about asking you to stay."

She crosses her arms again. "Well, I'm not leaving. You asked me to stay, so I'm staying," she says, feeling a bit like a petulant child and not caring that much. She doesn't care whether Malfoy thinks she's being immature, because she doesn't care about him. It sounds harsh to say it so bluntly, but that's the way the cards play.

Vaguely, she recognises the fact that simply by staying she's proving herself wrong.

"Fine."

"Fine."

Silence follows, tense moments during which her senses heighten despite the traces of alcohol running through her system. She looks down at her drink when she can no longer stand the burn of his eyes imploring her.

"You've changed," he says finally.

"We all have," she answers him. "It's the result of years of battles and betrayal." She puts the emphasis on that last, insinuating word and feels a surge of pride when he flinches noticeably.

"I didn't ask you to stay to talk about that. If I wanted to talk about that, I could have picked anyone in this restaurant."

"But you didn't. You picked me. And that means there's something you want to say."

And there it is, back in the open, the knowledge that this happens more often than either of them admits. Malfoy's eyes flicker up to glance at her, and then drop to his drink.

"There always is, Granger. And it's never good."

"From your point of view, at any rate. To me, it usually shows that you've actually got a soul somewhere inside that hollow body of yours."

"You're terribly irritating, did you know that?" Malfoy says, tipping his drink back.

"You've told me every time you've seen me," Hermione says, more lightly than she means to. "Now what is it you'd like to get off your chest this time?"  
  
From the moment she walked into the bar, Draco knew the night would equate trouble. Now, as she asks him what he wants to say to her, he says the only thing he can think to say.

"Everything."

And that is that.

He throws back the last sip of his scotch and waves the bartender over to pour him another.

"Honestly, Malfoy! I think you've had quite enough to drink tonight," she says and puts her hand over the top of the glass, stopping the bartender before he can give Draco the magic potion that makes everything better. "I think we should get you away from the temptation of this place. It's a bad atmosphere."

The bartender gives her a dirty look, but takes the coins Draco shoves at him and doesn't comment that he's overpaid.

"Come now, we're going to take a walk and you'll tell me what you want to tell me, and we'll be going our separate ways again."

"Fine," Draco says and walks out before her, letting the door close in her face.

She runs to catch up to him in the chilly night air. "_That_ was uncalled for."

"You didn't expect me to behave differently, did you?" Draco asks.

"Well, no," she says, but her expression belies her. They fall into step with each other, relaxing and taking comfort in the peace surrounding them. "You asked me to stay for a reason. You came out with me for a reason. What's the reason?"

"Never were one for small talk, were you, Granger? Always wanting to skip straight to the grand finale."

"It's served me well in the past. Now get on with it," she says impatiently.

"The thing is…"

"Malfoy," she says warningly.

"You remember how you told me, that day back on the battlefield, that if I wasn't too callous to feel after the war ended, how I'd find myself in love with someone I was willing to risk anything for?"

And the moon shines brighter, illuminating a streak across her hair and shadowing her face. There is nothing groundbreaking in the proclamation, and yet everything has changed.

The premise of their meetings, unarranged and always unpredictable, has vanished into the air, floating away like wisps of smoke chasing the wind.

The electric charge in the air tightens between them until he feels as though if he moves, she will dissolve into an illusion.

With those words unsaid, they could have turned this into another one of those nights, the nights when they pretend they don't know what they're doing and tumble into bed together, aching for something to make them feel complete again; but now they stand as an unbreakable invisible barrier.

For a long time, she doesn't say a word and purposely averts her gaze. Then, so softly he barely hears her, she whispers, "You don't love me. You don't know what love is."

Anger surges through him with the unexpected force of an Unforgivable and he doesn't know how he ends up with his hands gripped on her shoulders so tightly he knows there will be marks come morning, or how his lips find hers with bruising intensity, or how he's pulling back and yelling at her.

"You, Hermione Granger, are not qualified to lecture me about love! You are the one who doesn't know what love is, when you can't even admit it when it's staring you in the face! For years, Weasley followed you around like your little lapdog." Seeing Hermione's look of outrage, he raises his voice. "You argued and you never went to social outings together, using Potter as a catalyst when everyone knew. Everyone saw it, saw it in the way you two looked at each other when you found out you were each taking someone else to the Yule Ball in Fourth Year, saw it when you said goodbye at the end of each year, saw it when you wore the necklace he bought you for Christmas our last year, saw it when you stood at his grave for an hour after everyone else left. That was love, Granger. That was love and you were too blind to see it! Well, I'm not Weasley and I'm not going to sit idly by and watch as the same thing happens to us."

He grabs her roughly and kisses her again, but she remains stoic and unrelentingly hard against him, as though there's nothing in the world she would rather not do.

In pushing him away, Hermione stumbles back and stares at him with cold, hard eyes.

"You know nothing about me. How can you love a person you know nothing about?"

Draco throws his hands up. "What do you want me to know? I know that your favourite colour is azure blue, your favourite food is Shepard's pie, you like writing in a journal every night, you're still frustrated with your hair because it takes you hours to fix it up, you visit Ron's grave once a week, you pretend you know what you're doing at work, but most of the time you're shooting in the dark, and that you were secretly in love with Professor Lockhart. That last one I figured out back in Second Year, though."

Hermione stares at him, her mouth agape in a small 'o' of revelation.

And then she slaps him, hard enough to leave a stinging handprint across his face.

"What the hell was that for?" Draco demands, holding a hand to his face protectively.

"You should just be happy that I only slapped you once, you self-conceited, arrogant idiot! You know nothing about me. Facts, they're all _facts!_ If you knew me, then you'd know that I care for facts more than anything else, but that I know that simply knowing them does not connote an understanding of the topic. Behind every fact there is a cause, a reason. Voldemort murdered 600,000 humans, both Muggle and wizard, but why?"

"Because of the discrimination he faced growing up. He got a bit warped in the head and started to believe that it was his father's filthy Muggle blood that caused everyone to taunt him. He wanted to rid the world of that filth."

Hermione nods, her lips a tight line. "Yes, exactly. Why do I write in a journal every night instead of using a pensieve?"

"Because…" Draco stops, not knowing what to say.

"You see, you cannot love me because you do not understand me. You understand Voldemort more than you understand me."

"I understand how your body works," he snaps back, trailing his fingers tantalizingly up her arm.

She shivers, so slightly it would have been imperceptible to his eye had he not been scant inches away from her. "Maybe so, but you don't want to understand the rest of me."

"Why are you doing this, Hermione?" It's like a script, but he's getting all the lines wrong and instead of falling into his arms, she's backing away.

"Doing what?" she asks, folding her arms over her chest and turning to walk away.

"Running away from love. Again."

She swivels around sharply. _"What?"_

"Why are you running away from a chance at something real?" Draco strides toward her and uses his hand to draw her eyes to him, locking their gazes. There's no depth for him to fall into in her eyes, nothing but a shallow pool of half-formed emotions.

"This," she brushes his hand off her chin, "you think _this_ is something real? You think nights of clamouring at each other's bodies in an attempt to find some kind of peace is something real? I have never heard a more ridiculous concept."

Draco shakes with anger. "Fine. _Fine._ Go." He turns his back on her and waits to hear her retreating footsteps.

When he finally does, he walks for hours, shivering as rain begins to fall. Without knowing how, he finds himself at the edge of a lake. It seems vaguely familiar, a memory of a night long ago.

The moon casts a bright light on the water, like the sun bouncing off a piece of glass during a happier moment, but the ripples castrate the reflection, breaking it into thousands of pieces.  
  
Hermione wandered for hours the night before, hugging herself as drops of rain soaked through her clothes. He had no right, _no right,_ to claim he loved her.

The idiot had never known love, unless you counted the love of power and manipulation. She wouldn't be a player in his game, her mind wasn't his to mould, she would always dissent his opinions. How could he ever love someone who was the polar opposite of him?

The rain stops eventually, after she's soaked and chilled to the bone. She's been walking for hours, aimlessly but with purpose.

Now, somehow, she finds herself standing at Ron's grave as dawn broke over the horizon.

She looks up to the sky.

"Ron, I don't know if you're up there, but if you are, then you'll know that I say this every time I come to visit you and you're probably bursting to say just get on with it. And if you are up there, then you'll know why I'm here already. Well, probably. I'm not really sure how the whole afterlife thing works; it's probably the only part of life that no one can even hazard to guess at."

Hermione toes the ground, biting her lip.

"Ron, if you're watching me, then you know what happened last night. You know that Malfoy, _Draco Malfoy,_ told me that he loved me. You know that he tried to tell me I didn't know what love was, because I didn't see you chasing after me. He was wrong; I know what love is. I've known it ever since I fell in love with you.

"I don't know why I didn't tell you, but I have my theories. I've had nearly three years to dwell on it, and you know me—always thinking about the 'what ifs' and 'could have beens.' If you really want to know, then I think I never told you because I didn't want to lose you. I wanted to wait until we were safe to start anything, because I knew it would be complicated. Everything was always complicated between us. That was the biggest mistake of my life, Ron. Rarely a morning goes by when I don't wake up with pangs of regret in my side. I don't want to make the same mistake again.

"I couldn't say when it happened, exactly, only that it did. The first time I woke up in his bed, I was scared, like you were when Snape told you to catch your own spiders for that Hellfire potion. Maybe that's a bad analogy, because I can't imagine Malfoy would ever want to be compared to spiders, but it seems to fit." A faint ghost of a smile drifted across her face before fading back to her look of pained guilt.

"I'm standing here and all I can think is: You hate me, I know it. I can feel it in me. Quite honestly, I don't blame you. I'd hate myself, too, if I were you. When he kissed me last night, I was flooded with the most powerful feeling of guilt I've felt since you died in my arms, because suddenly we were more than just two bodies looking for something we couldn't find anywhere else and it was the first time I felt alive again."

She stops, biting her lip and taking long, slow breaths. For an indeterminate amount of time, she stands in front his grave and runs thoughts over and over in her head, her brain feeling like an agitator with an overload of material.

"I don't know what to tell you, Ron," she finally says. "All I know is that the past often has a tendency to repeat itself unless we make a conscious effort to change it. It's rounding on three years since I've seen you and I miss you, but I can't go on like this forever."

She pauses, and then kneels, tracing her fingers over his epitaph.

_"Ronald Bilius Weasley. 1 March 1980—26 February 1998. Beloved son, brother, and friend. He loved life._

"You always hated your middle name. Threatened to wash my mouth if I ever used your full name. I always thought it a bit funny, actually, that your middle name was Bilius. You and Harry never appreciated the humour."

She rises to her feet again, as if to kiss the sky, and says, "I loved you, Ron. We miss you, me and Harry. But it's been months since I felt something so real. I made the mistake in the past of letting go; I'm not about to make it again. I'm not going to ask for your blessing, because I know I'll never have it, but don't hate me. You knew the time was coming when I'd have to move on. I can't help it that my chance has come in the form of Draco Malfoy." Even with her mind made up, she can't help but feel a bit petrified of the words coming from her mouth.

"Well, if you are up there, then thanks for bearing with me. And if you're not, or you've decided that you can't listen to me anymore knowing that I'm going to do the unthinkable, I'm going to look awfully stupid talking to no one."

She presses a kiss to her hand, and then places her hand on the cool marble headstone. A flush of comfort washes over her, and she wonders whether she's gotten his blessing after all.

Hermione walks away, knowing innately where he is—passed out by the lake next to her flat—and her outline is black against the rose fire of the sunrise.  
  
_-fin-_


End file.
